[shipman05]

TBH, it seemed such an obvious point you're making that I assumed the author had to be comparing inflation-adjusted dollars, but from the (very little) digging that I did, it looks like that's not the case.

In fact, weddings decreased in inflation-adjusted cost between 1990 and 2023: https://ktvz.com/stacker-lifestyle/2024/03/01/how-us-wedding...

I would assume that downward trend has continued as inflation has spiked in the past few years and people had to spend more of their money in other areas.

[thwarted]

> I assumed the author had to be comparing inflation-adjusted dollars

As did I.

90s weddings remind me of the Friends episode where Monica was scoping out her wedding. Chandler revealed how much money he had by writing it on a price of paper (that is, the audience never saw the dollar value), and Monica said something like "oh, we can go with best one, plan A" and Chandler said he didn't want to spend that much money "on one party". I've always wondered what amount of money that was.

[stoneforger]

Well they used the money to buy a house in New York so it wasn't 15000 , because that's not a down payment for a New York house/ apt, even in the 90s.

[jgeada]

Inflation has made prices higher, but people's purchasing power has been decreasing all this time. Salaries, benefits etc have all not been keeping up with inflation for decades. It is why young people are marrying later, not able to afford to buy property etc. All the gains the economy has made over the past handful of decades have been captured by a small percentage of the population.

[ahepp]

> Salaries, benefits etc have all not been keeping up with inflation for decades

I don't believe that's consistent with the data

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N